Unless you’re completely off the technology grid (and in which case, you wouldn’t be reading this post anyhow), you’ve probably been bombarded by countless stories/mentions about the Internet of Things (IoT).

Whether you’re aware of it – like it or not – the IoT is already transforming our lives. Procter & Gamble, for instance, rolled out a web-enabled toothbrush at last month’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. It links with your smartphone, records your brushing habits and even has an app providing mouth-care tips alongside news headlines.

While that toothbrush may not initially be overwhelmingly transformative, it further illustrates where we’re heading. So to glean more, I queried four leading authorities who waxed eloquent on all things IoT.

The cast of distinguished players (listed alphabetically):

•Andy Castonguay – Principal Analyst with market research firm Machina Research. Andy focuses on the rapidly evolving M2M ecosystems in the Americas with a particular focus on mobile health solutions and the M2M devices space.

•Daniel Obodovski – Author of ‘The Silent Intelligence: the Internet of Things,’ Daniel most recently served as Qualcomm’s director of business development, where he led the commercial launch of multiple M2M products and businesses.

•Mike Sapien – Mike’s Principal Analyst-Enterprise for Ovum, a global market research company. He’s the U.S. liaison for Ovum’s telecom practice which includes coverage of enterprise mobility and M2M.

I lobbed a few questions to them; here are excerpts from our digital roundtable of sorts:

How is the IoT transforming our lives right now?

Andy: IoT is steadily being introduced into many aspects of our lives in intriguing layers - health and fitness measurements, connected home systems, contextually aware electronics and new models of cars fully connected and prompting new business models for service and content. Within a few years connected devices and sensors will have become a mainstream element of our lives.

Daniel: A smart thermostat helps you save on your utility bill by turning air conditioning or heat off when there is nobody in the house; it also allows you to remotely control the temperature. A fitness tracking device helps you staying healthy and on top of your fitness goals by measuring the amount of calories you burn throughout the day and comparing it to your friends and peers. And car insurance may offer you a better rate based on your actual driving habits instead of just your demographic profile, by using a device connected to your car’s OBD-II port. In addition, location tracking and monitoring devices help you accurately track your package while in route, connected industrial machines help optimize service cycles and dramatically reduce downtime, and cars can communicate to each other to avoid accidents.

Keith: In the consumer market, IoT is allowing people to have greater access to information to make more informed decisions. People are gaining more insight into their vehicles, health, and energy management. The IoT is making people more analytical and improving the thought process for humans. It is taking the focus away from gathering information and shifting it to the interpretation of data. In the enterprise market, IoT it is creating new business models with the amount of data being collected. IoT is also making companies more efficient in their operations. Both consumers and companies have access to information in real-time 24/7. The amount of information being collected is allowing companies to create actionable strategies much faster.

Mike: Some emerging mHealth solutions are starting to emerge as adoption increases for monitoring patients and overall improved patient outcomes driven by growing patient engagement. This is just one example but there are many including the use of wired parking meters that today allow cities to market, monetize and collect more revenue from street parking with integrated systems.

And how will it be transformative a year from now? Five years from now?

Andy: Within a year, connected car models will be common across the portfolios of many major manufacturers. This will begin to reshape how car owners interact with their dealers and the car companies in profound ways. Along these lines, Tesla recently used its connectivity platform to perform systems updates on its entire fleet following a recall announcement. This is all done in an over-the-air fashion, practically eliminating the need for Tesla owners to take their cars into a service center to perform the update. That signals the growing shift in experience brought about by IoT and the models will evolve from here.

Daniel: You won’t need to go to a doctor’s office just to check your blood pressure or measure your ECG. Your healthcare providers will receive a much richer picture of your health and well-being by utilizing data sent in real-time from devices you wear on your body or embedded in your clothes. That would allow your doctor to only contact you if something really requires her attention. So no more routine check-ups

Keith: Five years from now, the majority of new vehicles are anticipated to be connected vehicles. With wireless carriers making a big push in this market, vehicles are expected to be a major hub for Internet activity, thus allowing passengers to use more connected devices within vehicles. Companies like Audi have been real innovative in this area. And while there has been a considerable amount of discussion on the connected home, also watch for advancements in intelligent buildings. This market took a backseat because of the economy because building owners were spending fewer dollars on capital expenditures for retrofits. As the economy grows, new construction starts are expected along with more retrofits in existing properties. This is an emerging sector that will help transform the way we work in five years and how buildings are managed and interact with the smart grid.

Mike: Five years from now, every electronic device or any device that requires power will have a wireless connection and provide a value-added service or maintenance program based on the wireless connectivity for the user or the manufacturer. Car manufacturers will not be controlling infotainment or wireless connectivity in cars; end users and the devices that passengers bring will be driving most services and infotainment in cars. Mobile development and mobile device replacement will always be faster than car technology so they will never keep pace with new services.

What are some of the most promising IoT areas for entrepreneurs?

Andy: Technology represents the best hope for improving compliance, service delivery and monitoring health and behavioral shifts. The sector is notoriously complex, but for the ones who crack the code, the payoff will be substantial.

Daniel: Hardware remains one of the most attractive areas - just look at the successful campaigns by Pebble, Tile and others. In the IOT space hardware is years away from being commoditized. Smart applications - utilizing existing sensors and a smart phone or tablet as user interface is another promising area.

Keith: Connected healthcare is very promising because you have a sizeable aging baby boomer generation that is tech savvy. The ecosystem and key influencers are vast in this market and there is a plethora of potential opportunities. For example, there are opportunities with patients, caregivers, physicians, insurance companies, government, medical device companies and family members monitoring patients. Products and services targeting the smart city segment are very promising. Municipalities are constantly looking for ways to reduce expenses and provide more efficient services. Cities like Boston, Charlotte and New York are experimenting with unique applications.

Mike: The most promising areas are applications or solutions that simplify and improve the end user’s experience with a focus on simplicity and ease of use. In most cases, if the solution can be integrated into what the user does or has already, the more likelihood of increased adoption. As with most inventions or new business opportunities, it comes down to solving a problem, improving the existing process and/or creating unique solution for a specific market. Some of the most promising innovations will be consumer solutions that can make the transition to business use/markets.

And for venture investors?

Andy: The M2M/IoT vendor community is still quite diverse and fragmented. The next few years will provide plenty of opportunity for capital investors as well as the chance to roll up companies to gain scale and reach.

Daniel: Again, hardware has a lot of potential if done right. Most investors prefer to focus on software and services, but without hardware in the IOT space no software and services can thrive. Wearable devices are a very promising area. Consumer medical devices are a good bet, because they don’t require a FDA approval. In addition, any vertical solutions (platforms, services) that simplify and facilitate time-to-market for IOT applications may be promising.

Keith: The key for venture investors is finding companies that provide a unique value proposition and they truly understand the ecosystem and end-user requirements for each market they participate in. The hot areas are expected to be mHealth, connected home, intelligent building and smart city. The industrial process industry is a unique opportunity because there are several legacy products in the field and various standards. This is a market that could experience solid opportunities but it will require a company that has a very unique value proposition.

Mike: With IoT and the pace of innovation, it may require investors to speed up their decisions in all phases of the investment timeline and cycle. It is a little more than ‘fail fast’ but definitely with IoT, the development cycle may be accelerated versus other investments.

Provide a couple of successful IoT examples.

Andy: Tesla is one. Medical devices such as sleep apnea machines and diabetes care devices are also making significant progress.

Daniel: Already this year there have been several significant acquisitions in the IOT space. Two of these are ThingWorx being bought by PTC for $130 million and the acquisition of Nest Labs, the makers of a smart thermostat, by Google for $3.2 billion. ThingWorx offered a platform allowing for easy development and deployment of third party apps on IOT devices. Nest Labs, a startup, managed to sell almost a million thermostats within two years, which says a lot about the demand for IOT solutions.

Keith: AT&T’s Digital Life solution illustrates how the connected home is evolving. It allows customers to monitor their home remotely and can be customized based on each end user’s needs.

Mike: FitBit is good example of simple IoT solution that has gotten a certain amount of adoption.

How will the IoT transform economies from both a macro and micro perspective?

Andy: At a macro level, one of the areas receiving heavy focus and investment is smart cities. Barcelona is among the vanguard in this area of smarter coordination of city systems and resources including transportation, energy, and waste management.

Daniel: The IOT will dramatically transform the global supply chain. The impact will be similar to that of the Internet in the 1990s when order entry processes were dramatically shortened. The IOT will allow all stakeholders in the supply chain to monitor the movement of goods in real-time and save huge amounts on optimizing the flow, preventing incidents and so on. In the emerging economies the IOT will allow them to leapfrog some of the legacy proprietary technologies that developed economies had to cope with.

Keith: Cisco predicts a $14.4 trillion in value is at stake between now and 2022.

Mike: IoT will definitely change government activity and transactions with its citizenry from regulation, fee administration and the simple parking meter example. From government to universities to corporations, the incoming generation will be demanding more access, be more visual, social media conscious and accept the use of simple IoT solutions versus many of the traditional methods.

Any IoT caveats that are a cause for concern?

Andy: Security is definitely a concern in the current environment, especially for any product or service that can represent a personal safety risk, financial privacy target or crucial infrastructure liability. That concern is being addressed by many companies, but I suspect hiccups are imminent.

Daniel: Data privacy is crucial - significant amounts of data are being collected on a daily basis about our lives - from personal fitness devices, medical devices, thermostats, intelligent cars and so on. It still remains unclear who owns all of this data and how it’s being used and monetized, and, most importantly, how much control consumers have in this whole process.

Keith: All of this data being collected is also a major concern for enterprises. Companies are spending R&D dollars to close the loop because security concerns are limiting some of the growth in this market. There is also a noticeable lack of standards.

Mike: The basic question remains – Is the IoT solution solving a problem? Is it much simpler than the previous process or solution? If the answer is yes, then the security, ease of use, ROI and go-to-market tactics are all critically important.

And where do we go from here?

Andy: IoT and M2M solutions present some of the most exciting business opportunities in the market today. Those opportunities are as much related to selling cool, connected products as they are focused on rethinking the nature of existing business models and client interaction. The next few years will bring substantial change in how connected things become part of our daily lives. In the same way most of us can’t imagine a life without a smartphone or computer today, the expanding array of connected devices and sensors will soon become part of the fabric of our daily lives.

Daniel: We are at the very early stages of the IOT, but it’s about to change our lives in more profound ways than we can imagine today.

Keith: Companies that will be successful will be those that understand the trends and make actionable strategies based on the ecosystem of each vertical market they are targeting. This will be the difference between winning and losing in this market.

Mike: IoT should not be viewed as a complete panacea – it’s an overused, abused and misunderstood term that really is about solving a problem or improving a current process using wireless communication effectively. Since most electronics or powered device will have a wireless option, the challenge is to develop the solutions that have an adoption rate, lifecycle and sizable market that match the investment and resources required for a profitable IoT based business.

Thursday, Jan 29, 2015

BLOG POST: This marked my 10th consecutive year at International CES, and as regular as the day’s sunset, there will always be on display various gadgets that make you scratch your head and wonder what the inventors were thinking. And with others, you still scratch your head as well and think – what a clever idea! Why didn’t I think of that?

Tuesday, Mar 31, 2015

BLOG POST: Unless you’re completely cut off from civilization (in which case you wouldn’t be reading this), drones are rapidly buzzzzzzzing their way into our lives. And the global market and impact is enormous. The Consumer Electronics Association, for instance, estimates about 425,000 drones will be sold this year, amounting to about $130 million in sales. By 2018, the annual market is expected to top $1 billion.

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

ARTICLE: In a report issued last year by PWC, “The Internet of Things” What It Means for US Manufacturing,” the company said “over the next decade, manufacturers could stand to capture about $4 trillion of value from the IoT through increased revenues and lower costs.” That’s a lot of pocket change.

Tuesday, Jun 23, 2015

ARTICLE: The tragic Charleston shooting last week has again brought the national conversation about gun control front and center. Concurrent with that has been a lot of Internet chatter about smart gun technology.

Monday, Aug 31, 2015

ARTICLE: Advertisers have been salivating for years at the promise of mobile advertising. Gartner, for instance, predicts that by 2017, annual mobile advertising revenues will be almost $42 billion. Display formats making up most of that chunk, but video (driven by tablets and growth in tablet ownership) will show the highest growth.

Friday, Oct 30, 2015

ARTICLE: Over the past couple of years, according to Fleet Owner, truckers have tapped in to an array of mobile business applications that are helping to strengthen a fleet’s competitive advantage and assist with regulatory compliance.

Monday, Nov 30, 2015

ARTICLE: While it’s not likely that R2-D2 is going to sit down with you at home and help construct your portfolio, reinvest your dividends and even harvest your tax losses, the use of robo-advisers is nonetheless growing in popularity.

Thursday, Dec 24, 2015

ARTICLE: Affective computing is nothing new – it has been around for awhile – over a decade, in fact. As defined by MIT’s Media Lab, affective computing is computing “that relates to, arises from, or deliberately influences emotion or other affective phenomena.”

Tuesday, Feb 2, 2016

ARTICLE: Telematics is nothing new – the technology’s been around for decades – but the ubiquitous smartphone is now expected to drive telematics penetration in private hire vehicles and taxis to 21% globally by 2019

Monday, Apr 25, 2016

ARTICLE: A generation from now (or probably much less), your blue jeans might tell you that they really need to be washed. Or your blue blazer might complain that that hideous Christmas gift tie you got from Aunt Mabel just doesn’t cut it with your dress shirt and slacks.

Wednesday, Jun 1, 2016

ARTICLE: If you constantly shank your drives into the rough, have a propensity for landing your ball in every other sand trap and have a knack for choking on those three-foot putts, well, golf analytics may offer some incremental improvements to your game, but playing on the PGA Tour will still be a bedtime fantasy. The skinny, however, is that the analytics gleaned via wearable technology and cloud computing are bringing about a sea change in golf.

Thursday, Jun 30, 2016

BLOG POST: An MIT study predicted last year that shared, self-driving cars may take so many vehicles off the road – perhaps 80% of them – that a new class of ‘exurbs’ in the U.S. may spring up within a decade. “With fewer cars, much of this space could be freed for other uses. Such reduction in car numbers would also dramatically lower the cost (and related energy consumption) of building and maintaining roads,” said MIT’s Matthew Claudel and Carlo Ratti. One engineering study, they noted, found that automation could quadruple capacity on any given highway – and fewer cars translate to less noise and a small environmental impact. These self-driving vehicles will eventually blur the lines between public/private transportation modes.

Friday, Jul 29, 2016

BLOG POST: Washers of the world, unite! While that’s taking a bit of poetic license from the famous rallying cry in the 1848 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, advances in smart appliances may someday have washers from Halifax to Harare talking to each other.

Thursday, Aug 25, 2016

BLOG POST: I never threw out my extensive baseball card collection. While I don’t have a T206 Honus Wagner American Tobacco Company card (sold for $2.8 million in August 2007) or a Topps 1952 Mickey Mantle rookie year card (sold by Dallas-based Heritage Auctions in December 2015 to an anonymous collector for $525,800), the collection has increased in value over the years as it sits in multiple shoe boxes silently stuffed away in a corner of a closet. Not surprisingly, in today’s digital age, sports card collecting has also gone digital over the past few years and those of us that still have paper card collections are becoming an endangered species. You no longer get a stick of Bazooka bubble gum to chew for hours on end, but the flip side is that a memorable sports moment can immediately be available online and downloaded.

Thursday, Sep 29, 2016

BLOG POST: hey never take a vacation day. In fact, they work 24/7 in the warehouse with nary a complaint. They don’t kvetch about the rising cost of healthcare insurance. And other than initially programming them, they don’t need any extensive training. Warehouse robots are growing in popularity and are already causing an upheaval in the industry. Steve Vairma, who heads up the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents 122,000 grocery-warehouse workers, said “employers are looking to move more and more into automation and we’re going to be faced with those challenges in contract negotiations in coming years.”

Monday, Oct 3, 2016

BLOG POST: It should come as no surprise - Millennials grab most of their info online – and via smartphones. And that extends to how they discover works of art. To further corroborate this, Invaluable, an online marketplace for fine art, antiques and collectibles, conducted a survey earlier this year entitled ‘American Attitudes Toward Art.’ Some interesting survey findings:

Monday, Jan 16, 2017

BLOG POST: This year at CES marked a personal milestone – the good folks at CES affixed a ‘10+ Years’ ribbon to the bottom of my badge (it’s actually 12 but who’s counting). To paraphrase from those ubiquitous Allstate commercials, after a dozen consecutive Las Vegas sojourns, “I know a thing or two because I’ve seen a thing or two.” And there was a lot to see. The buzzwords this year were augmented reality, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and robotics. Wearables and phones? There, but somewhat passé. On to the next trend(s), product(s).

Friday, Feb 3, 2017

BLOG POST: Marketers can learn a thing or two from our furry (and scaly for those who may own reptiles, snakes, other creepy-crawlers) friends. While the fast-growing $61 billion a year pet product industry is wooing new consumers with disruptive marketing campaigns, e-Commerce and digital marketing to pet owners is still the new frontier. According to Annalect, a New York City-based data analytics company, only 8.2 percent of the entire market regularly shops for pet products online.

Tuesday, Apr 25, 2017

BLOG POST: Artificial intelligence (AI), to use a hackneyed term, is already causing a paradigm shift for marketers. AI, in brief, is helping brands to rapidly collaborate with and learn from online followers. And while there probably exists many a Luddite that deems AI a pervasive jobs threat, the flip side is that it may be a golden opportunity to let the machines do mundane stuff like customer support, enabling humans to become more creative.

Tuesday, Jan 2, 2018

BLOG POST: How is technology giving firefighters an extra edge? With the Lilac Fire, helicopters carried iPads that displayed critical information; the firefighters also had custom cell phone apps that gave them up-to-the-second status reports.

Tuesday, Feb 18, 2014

BLOGPOST: Welcome to NealNotes; this is my inaugural blog post. Not exactly Proustian prose, but there you have it – short/succinct. Going forward, I’ll comment on various technology trends/issues/ideas, in short, whatever techles my fancy (sorry, inveterate punster too, even when borderline like that one). Unless you have successfully disengaged yourself from every conceivable 21st Century communications device, you’ve probably been hearing a lot about wearable devices – that they’re the next big trend/revolution/most stupendous technological invention since the cotton gin, ad nauseum. Well, not quite, but wearable devices were yakked about incessantly at CES 2014 last month and the overall buzz is getting louder.

Wednesday, Mar 26, 2014

BLOGPOST: Unless you’re completely off the technology grid (and in which case, you wouldn’t be reading this post anyhow), you’ve probably been bombarded by countless stories/mentions about the Internet of Things (IoT). Whether you’re aware of it – like it or not – the IoT is already transforming our lives. Procter & Gamble, for instance, rolled out a web-enabled toothbrush at last month’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. It links with your smartphone, records your brushing habits and even has an app providing mouth-care tips alongside news headlines.

Friday, Apr 18, 2014

BLOGPOST: It’s challenging enough trying to generate some noise and buzz about your product/service/app if you’re a U.S.-based startup. Cracking the U.S. market can be daunting. But if you’re a foreign startup, the difficulties are manifold. Fortunately, many countries and private organizations have realized this and have rolled out extensive programs and services to bolster the success rate for these nascent companies on this side of the pond.

Friday, May 30, 2014

BLOGPOST: Back in 1974, Dov Frohman, one of Intel’s first employees and the inventor of EPROM, erasable programmable read only memory, decided to leave Silicon Valley and return to Israel, his adopted home since 1949. Frohman was charged with helping Intel establish a small chip design center in Haifa, which at the time, was Intel’s first outside the U.S. The rest, as the cliché goes, is history. In a little over a generation, the Israeli semiconductor industry has grown to now employ more than 20,000; annual revenues are about US $5 billion.

Wednesday, Jun 25, 2014

PODCAST: The ‘selfie’ phenomenon has grown exponentially. BGR, for instance, estimates more than 250 billion selfies will be taken worldwide this year. People from all walks of life have embraced selfies. In fact, The Guardian reports that UK farmers are posting ‘felfies’ – a selfie snapped on the farm. “But it’s not just for fun – social media is a lifeline for people in a lonely profession…the ‘felfie’ is taking off, with farmers posting photos of themselves next to their favorite sheep, cow or tractor,” noted The Guardian.

Wednesday, Jul 23, 2014

PODCAST: Culturing 3D human tissue on a microchip isn’t new. Like system-on-a-chip (SoC), which shoehorns most of a digital computer into a single chip, an organ-on-a-chip is designed to replicate human organ functions (including activities and mechanics like blood and oxygen flow) on a transparent, flexible microchip. These microfluidic devices which, in effect, are 3D cell culture versions of real organs, already exist for artery, cartilage, gut, heart, kidney, and skin.

Monday, Sep 1, 2014

BLOGPOST: Last year architects in Amsterdam started constructing a 3D printed home. Aircraft manufacturers are honing ways to build 3D printed planes. And 3D printing is now wending its way through the fashion industry. A 3D printed dress designed by Michael Schmidt (designed on an iPad), was printed for a private runway event – it was printed in 17 parts on an EOS P350 3D printer. “3D printing presents tremendous opportunities for businesses,” said Simon Jones, a partner at DLA Piper in London, a global law firm. “Manufacturers will no longer need to own large production facilities halfway around the world, because they can print products on demand or sell licenses to print them locally. This will have a huge impact on the supply chain; it will benefit the environment as there will be less waste, and companies will no longer need to spend a fortune gearing up to make a product and hoping its stock sells.” So the sky’s the limit for 3D printing. And for counterfeiters too.

Friday, Oct 3, 2014

BLOGPOST: With the world’s population now exceeding seven billion, many municipalities in both emerging markets and developed nations are paying closer attention on how they manage their infrastructure and resources. A number of larger cities are well on their way to becoming smart cities. Market research firm Frost & Sullivan succinctly sums up how these cities are now being defined – built on solutions and technology leading to the adoption of at least five of eight smart parameters – smart energy, smart building, smart mobility, smart healthcare, smart infrastructure, smart technology, smart governance and smart education, and smart citizen.

Thursday, Oct 30, 2014

BLOGPOST: Textbook. 20th Century definition: A manual of instruction in any branch of study. 21st Century definition: Ancient learning methodology, last used by aging baby boomers. Killed lots of trees. Replaced by e-Books that are usually interactive and often open or free to use and sometimes edit.

Monday, Dec 1, 2014

BLOGPOST: It’s probably not too far fetched now to predict that in the near future – at least within the next decade or so according to some studies and experts – you might be served by R2D2, or a similar robotic food service entity. Yes, numerous restaurants, especially those of the fast-food variety, are rapidly embracing

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